The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
The proliferation of computer networks, and in particular the Internet, has given rise to increased concerns about the dissemination of personal information. In the healthcare industry, standards have been developed, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPAA), to protect patient information, also referred to as Protected Health Information (PHI). Conversely, however, there is often a need for health care professionals, such as physicians and educators, to share and collaborate on patient information to provide treatment and for educational purposes, respectively. For example, image data that contains identifying information, e.g., information that identifies a person, is often shared among physicians to obtain a second opinion on a condition. One approach for addressing these issues is to manually remove identifying information from image data using, for example, image editing software. This approach, however, is labor intensive and prone to errors. For example, not all identifying information may be removed from an image and valuable portions of image data that do not contain identifying information may be accidentally removed.